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This is effectively overcharging cash customers for the availability of a service that they don't use. Cash isn't free for stores to handle either. They need t
by chongli 6y ago
This is effectively overcharging cash customers for the availability of a service that they don't use.
Cash isn't free for stores to handle either. They need to pay employees to count up the cash at closing time, put it in the safe, and periodically distribute cash to registers so they don't run out of change. Additionally, stores typically contract with security companies to pickup and deliver cash to/from the store and the bank.
Maybe the costs from above are not identical to the fees for credit card transactions, but they may be close enough that it's not worth it for a store to charge different prices and incur the overhead from that. Some stores do however offer discounts for using cash. The examples I can think of off the top of my head are family-run Chinese take-out restaurants. These tend to have family members counting and handling cash, so they may have less overhead, or they may be too small to warrant hiring a security company to make cash pickups.
- kevincox 6y agoThose are good points, and maybe I picked a bad example. But my point is if that Apple claims that the security and convince is worth 30% we should let the market decide. This is to an extent what Google Music is doing and I think it would be healthy if more companies did this.
- frosted-flakes 6y agoA common argument is that Apple is effectively a monopoly, in which case "the market" can't decide. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with this viewpoint, but Android and iOS are two separate markets because the cost of switching between them is so high, users are subjected to so much lock-in that switching is almost not an option, and users can only use one market at a time. The difference is that while Apple has a monopoly on iOS with its app store, Google does not have a monopoly on Android with the Play Store because of the existence of competing stores (Galaxy Store, F-Droid, sideloading APKs etc.). There are analogies to be drawn with game consoles, but there are some key differences: game consoles are not general purpose computing devices necessary for everyday life; users can own multiple consoles at once; there are more than two competitors; and the cost of switching is relatively low.
- kevincox 6y agoI'm pretty sure if many popular services charged 30% more if you subscribed on an iPhone the word would get around pretty quick. The other option in this case is purchasing the subscription from your browser which is awkward, but viable, even with Apple's authoritarian ToS.